SPAC 感恩节特辑：疫苗进展、创新与监管之争，以及高等教育的出路

Speaker 1 (00:00:00): Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Besties are back, and it's a bestie, Spax giving. Congratulations. Jason Calacanis (00:00:07): ends too. The queen of Kinois, his 2nd company, David Friedberg, announces today out is before the taping of this special thanksgiving pod that he is taking metro mile public through his back and that best he see And here is the quote that as only Chamath can tweet, Buffett had GEICO. I pick Metromile. I would just like to say -- That's David Friedberg (00:00:38): how you move markets. Jason Calacanis (00:00:40): LeBron James, has 3 rings. Friedberg, tell us what is Metromile? And Speaker 1 (00:00:49): -- David Friedberg (00:00:49): Well, this isn't a self promoting podcast. is it? I mean, Jason Calacanis (00:00:52): like -- No. But I think it's just you know, it's your second company. David Friedberg (00:00:55): I started the company in 2011 when I was running climate, when I was the CEO there. And, you know, we were Chamath was offering insurance at the time. We learned a lot about the insurance markets and figured, like, hey. You know, telematics or connecting cars to the Internet is gonna be a big deal, and we're gonna be able to completely change the auto insurance industry. So we set up this company. I was the chairman from the founding in Speaker 1 (00:01:19): 2011. David Friedberg (00:01:21): And, you know, been been chairman, and I've been an active investor in the business in every round since then. So the business has built some, you know, really compelling value proposition for customers, and, you know, it's got really good unit economics and it's you know, needed its last round of capital to get profitable. And it turns out, you know, as we were thinking about that this summer that a SPAC was a really good path for the business given the inflection point it's at. Jason Calacanis (00:01:49): And so -- -- the basic premise of the business is instead of paying for insurance, by month or time period. The innovation here is you pay per mile. David Friedberg (00:01:58): Yeah. Insurance today is like, you know, you fill out a form and you get a price for insurance, and you pay that rate for 6 months coverage. But, you know, depending on when you're driving and how much you're driving, you should be paying a different price. Right? So we we kind of changed the model to a rate per mile. And so if you don't drive, you're safe. You know? So the average customer doesn't drive a lot with Metromile. They save 47% over what they were paying with, like, GEICO or Progressive ReAssurance. Jason Calacanis (00:02:23): And you do that with that ODB port. It's like -- Yeah. The little David Friedberg (00:02:26): plug in device. And, increasingly, we're actually doing it directly by connecting to cards direct through Ford. And a couple other big automotive OEMs now have this ability to send the data directly out of the car because they're all Internet connected now. So So that allows us to just basically, you know, see how many miles you're driving and the rate per mile is what we bill you each month times the number of miles you drove on your on your car. Jason Calacanis (00:02:47): And you you didn't mention how you drive. I think that was a controversial concept for a while. You know, if you speed, if you Speaker 1 (00:02:55): -- David Friedberg (00:02:55): Right. Jason Calacanis (00:02:56): We -- No. That that is a separate road map or no? David Friedberg (00:02:58): That that that is part of it today. But, frankly, 70% of the price difference you get in auto insurance is from the number of miles you drive, and only 30% is really in this variance around behavior. You know, most people are generally pretty good drivers. So believe it or not, So the the real variance in terms of, you know, your risk to the insurance companies is how many miles you drive. So that really is the predominant factor. So if we can accurately crack that, Now what's interesting is, like, in a world of autonomous cars where you're, like, turning on the car to be autonomous or fully self driving at some point, you know, it's on and off. you should be getting a different rate for those miles. Right? So if the car is if your Tesla's on autopilot on the freeway, that should be safer than you on the freeway, you shouldn't be paying as much credit shirts. Even better. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:38): You can David Friedberg (00:03:38): kinda you can kinda think about how this moves into a world where everything is dynamically priced and dynamically billed. Jason Calacanis (00:03:44): Usage priced. David Sacks (00:03:45): Yeah. David Friedberg (00:03:45): Usage priced. And that and and also fair. So, you know, if you're a good driver and you're driving well or if you're using autonomous features, you shouldn't pay as much. And, ultimately, that translates you know, into a truly kind of more dynamic service. And that's really where the world has to go because those low mileage drivers or those good drivers or those drivers using autonomous features, should be paying considerably less. So they'll start using our service, and that'll force the other guys to raise their rates. And it creates this huge, you know, kind of market mode Jason Calacanis (00:04:13): Great. And we're David Friedberg (00:04:14): in the we're in the we're in the very early days. I mean, it's, like, the first innings still. So we're, you know, we're we're just getting going. Jason Calacanis (00:04:20): Chomavu chose to do a pipe with the stack. Explain to the audience what a pipe is for people don't know and what you loved about Metro Mile. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:28): Sure. I think the what what is a pipe? The pipe is a a private investment in a public enterprise. And, basically, what that means is that you're making the round bigger. Right? So it's kind of like Sequoia does your series a and invests 10,000,000. I would come in and put another 10,000,000, and now your series a is Speaker 1 (00:04:49): 20,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:51): Same terms as the as Sequoia's round except you're now just grossing up the amount of capital. Why are why is that helpful? Well, what it does is it allows somebody to price the deal. So in this case, David Spack's sponsor priced the deal, did the diligence, and decided to underwrite metromile at that price. And then they came to me and said, hey. You know, do you wanna come and join this round, essentially? actually. And I got to know the business. A lot of things that David said basically are true. The the thing that I will say is, like, you know, everybody talks about the value of machine learning, right, and data oriented learning. The most obvious thing that you can do is if you learn on top of a huge subset of data, especially out in the real world, like driving data or any other kind of information is you should be taking risk on top of it. And this is why sort of these next generation insurance companies to me are so interesting because it's probably where you're gonna see machine learning be used at just massive, massive scale because you're just gonna reprice risk and make it, as David said, much more dynamic So anyways, they showed it to me. I I really like the the product. The metrics are really amazing, and so I joined. It's great. I'm really excited for I'm really excited for Friedberg. Jason Calacanis (00:06:10): Yeah. Congratulations. Great. David Friedberg (00:06:12): Jamal and I have never worked on anything together, so it's awesome. We're doing our first project here on the online podcast together. Jason Calacanis (00:06:19): Alright. David Sacks (00:06:19): So sounds Speaker 1 (00:06:20): -- David Sacks (00:06:20): It it sounds like a brilliant idea, and I'm just pissed so I'm not part of it. I know. I'm feeling good. I read. I read it like the 2 besties. Speaker 1 (00:06:27): -- Jason Calacanis (00:06:27): here for me and sex? David Sacks (00:06:29): Yeah. I Jason, do you know about this? Jason Calacanis (00:06:31): I I don't know anything. I get I'm the last -- You're David Sacks (00:06:33): both cut out of it? First, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:34): we're both Jason Calacanis (00:06:35): cut out of it. I need to get my beak wet. YouTube Speaker 1 (00:06:38): -- David Sacks (00:06:38): We got the wet. our piece. Jason Calacanis (00:06:39): I can't get my beak wet. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:41): You do you do narcissistic besties have been have been running around all the tank touting every single unicorn. You can sit in front David Friedberg (00:06:48): of me. -- allocation and rob hood. I missed my allocation for for Uber or whatever. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:06:53): Alright. New bestie rule new bestie rule. Everybody gets a slice, even a little tasty poo. Everybody gets their beak wet Speaker 1 (00:06:59): -- David Friedberg (00:06:59): Like the old neighborhood. Like the old neighborhood. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:02): You know what I mean? Speaker 1 (00:07:02): -- Jason Calacanis (00:07:02): back a little share Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:04): Let's Jason, why don't you start an AngelList syndicate for every all in podcast listener? Jason Calacanis (00:07:09): Yes. All in podcast syndicate. It will be on the syndicate.com. I love the AngelList Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We'll do it. We'll do it. dust into kit.com/all in podcast, and then we'll aggregate all these subscribers. I just say 20% carry? And you guys can suggest I did credit. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:25): No. We we'll do we'll do Speaker 1 (00:07:26): 0 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:26): carry and we'll allow all the listeners to participate in our deals, which I think would be pretty cool. Speaker 1 (00:07:30): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:30): Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:07:31): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:31): listen. I've Speaker 1 (00:07:31): -- Jason Calacanis (00:07:32): I love how every time you loop my business into this, whether it's podcasting or syndicates, you take out the money and the profit. David Friedberg (00:07:39): I tell you what. I an idea. Jason Calacanis (00:07:40): How about Speaker 1 (00:07:40): we spack Jason Calacanis (00:07:41): this weekend startups, and you do it for no participation? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:45): I'm the father of growth. You know how you grow by making things free. You wanna maximize demand? Just make it free. By the way, on this topic, Saksi Poo had this incredible tweet this week, which is basically like, wow. This is like my 95th unicorn went that filed to go public. I mean, literally, every single unicorn that filed this week to go public, Saks, was an angel investor, which is incredible. Ses a says a good ease as an investor. But the best follow-up to eat was Zach Weinberg, the cofounder of Flat Iron Health whose tweet was. I just wanna myself on nothing for having not been a part of any of these competition. I would Jason Calacanis (00:08:25): like to congratulate myself for making no bad and taking no risk and getting no reward. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:30): I thought I thought Zach's tweet was the best. David Friedberg (00:08:32): Zach, don't you find it tiring, like, all these investments that you've made? Like, don't don't these guys call you and wanna do meetings and chat all the time. I mean, you know, this has gotta be, like, a a huge amount of effort. Right? David Sacks (00:08:45): Well, not not not I mean, it not David Friedberg (00:08:48): real. -- to turn around? David Sacks (00:08:50): Well, you know, if you're not on the board, your obligation is basically to respond when somebody asks you for something. And as an angel investor, it is a little different when you're actually, like, leading around and you're a board member. It's fine. Yes. Exactly. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:04): I David Sacks (00:09:04): was making these investments back in 2012, 2013. That's when These seeds were planted. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:09:11): These were 50 k, 100 k, 250 k checks. Right? So the responsibility is proportional to the dollar amount. David Sacks (00:09:18): So somewhere a little bigger than that, actually. But -- Yeah. David Friedberg (00:09:20): Oh. Speaker 1 (00:09:21): -- David Sacks (00:09:22): I I mean, I've written I I've written checks, you know, 7 figure checks in some of these companies. David Friedberg (00:09:26): Sachs, according to your personal balance sheet that we got from your accountant this Jason Calacanis (00:09:30): week -- Yeah. Kill how many sent it. David Friedberg (00:09:31): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:09:34): Oh, man. We see here a transaction for Howes. Is it true you did the series b of Howes, the entire series b? David Friedberg (00:09:40): Dollars? No. No. Jason Calacanis (00:09:43): I heard it was you led the series to me. David Sacks (00:09:46): No. No. NEA led that round. I mean, I invested a lot as an individual. I did co lead the series b or c of Atypar. That was one that I did as an individual. Jason Calacanis (00:09:59): That's incredible. Yeah. That's amazing. Gonna be huge. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:02): have no idea what that company is, but that sounds awesome. Jason Calacanis (00:10:04): They manage funds. David Sacks (00:10:06): They do portfolio management software. Yeah. It's coming up on, you know, $100,000,000,000 are Speaker 1 (00:10:11): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:13): I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding. Let's start the pod, Jay Kal, where are we gonna start Jason Calacanis (00:10:18): Well, I mean, I think Speaker 1 (00:10:20): -- David Friedberg (00:10:20): Now that we've also promoted Speaker 1 (00:10:21): -- David Sacks (00:10:22): Exactly. Well, I'm I'm just happy to hear that that Jason was cut out of your deal much as me. When I when when I read about it on Twitter, I'm like, I better not be the only best to cut out Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:32): of this. David Sacks (00:10:36): I am alright. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:38): You're right. You're totally right. You're right. Jason Calacanis (00:10:39): You're right. It is it is getting awkward now because people who watch this podcast assume that we do everything together. Like literally, they're like, well, you guys go grocery shopping together, you go on vacation together, you guys are living the same to the talk house. Yeah. Yeah. It's that that's not how it works. I I think the first thing we should we should talk about is just this amazing moment in time when because of science, you know, and this podcast started during the pandemic, We have had, as predicted by Friedberg, who gets to take 2 victory laps, he said by the end of the year, we'd have vaccines and they would have because of this mrna, if I remember correctly, 90, ninety five percent efficacy and sure enough the week after Trump wins. I'm sorry. Louis is sorry. Saks. He lost, actually. The week after Trump lost. I know you didn't vote for him. the week after he lost Moderna, a Pfizer, then the next week, Moderna, and then the next week Oxford. And I understand Johnson and Johnson is about to announce something, and all of these have 90 to 95% efficacy and that there are gonna be 40,501,000,000 doses in December, January February just from the first two in America alone. So, Friedberg, if you were to put a number on when herd immunity hits because probably 20 or 30% of people have had it, 20 or 30 percent of people have some natural immunity, how long is this gonna take? And could we be at be doing this from a warriors game next year? When when are we gonna be able to do this in person? David Friedberg (00:12:20): I think I don't know if Jason Calacanis (00:12:21): it was -- -- the task. David Friedberg (00:12:22): Yeah. I don't know if it was Fauci or someone that's closer to the operation shared that they do think they can get 70% of Americans immunized by May. So -- May. Speaker 1 (00:12:31): -- David Friedberg (00:12:31): by May. Yeah. So, you know, if you'll remember a few podcasts ago, I think I I tried to explain a big part of the budget that went into this operation warp speed was to parallelize production of these vaccines while they were being tested. And so we've been scaling up the production and the manufacturing needs. And if they weren't gonna work, we're just gonna crash them. Right? A couple $1,000,000,000. Who cares? It's a good option. for the American people. So we've got a ton of doses that have been produced. It's about packaging and distribution now, and that's, you know, supposed to be kinda underway with the plan to be that on December 11th, they're 12th. When they give the emergency use authorization, these doses start showing up in Jason Calacanis (00:13:08): character's choice. We basically went all in blind. Like, we just shove the chips in and said, we're gonna make these vaccines even if they're David Friedberg (00:13:15): not -- It's more like it's more like a a spray and pray Angel Investment portfolio. You know, we we bought a a bunch we bought, like, 4 different things or 5 different things. We made bets in all of them, and I hope that one of them pays off. And it turns out they're all gonna pay off. So, you know, or or or chunk of them are gonna pay off, and we get to have them ready, you know, in time to kinda make a difference here. Now All that being said, if you look at the case numbers in the US right now, we could be as high as 30% of the American people have already been infected with coronavirus based on some estimates. So as of the June 30th paper that was published from those dialysis patients, and they did a pretty good statistical interpretation of looking at antibodies in people's blood, they estimate 10% of the American population was infected by coronavirus as of June 30th. And then if you look at the number of people that have been infected since then and you apply the similar sort of multiple that you would assume based on tests, you know, there there's an estimate that we could already be up to 30% of the US population has been infected. Jason Calacanis (00:14:15): Wow. And and, therefore, immune. David Friedberg (00:14:17): And the theoretically, mostly immune. Let's just say Right? And so we share those anecdotes and so on. But, yeah, let's just say, generally, yes, immune. And so you combine that with these vaccines starting to roll out, and we get you know, a pretty kind of comfortable position in terms of the pandemic in in, hopefully, a couple of months here. And that's why the market's going nuts, and that's why everyone I mean, I don't know about you guys but I got some conference invites this last week for conferences for next year that have been canceled this year, and we're being put on hold. Yeah. So -- Oh, wow. Speaker 1 (00:14:45): -- David Friedberg (00:14:45): people at Star to to lean. Jason Calacanis (00:14:46): What for what time frame? 3rd quarter or 4th quarter? David Friedberg (00:14:49): Summer, July. Jason Calacanis (00:14:50): Yeah. So people are now assuming that, and they're booking hotel spaces based on it. That is extraordinary Saks. You shared this New York Times story. Why don't you summarize it for the audience? And I'd love to get your thoughts in addition to this as to what this recovery might look like if in fact we have more vaccine than we need and even, you know, a reasonable number of Americans take it and don't believe that it's a conspiracy theory by Bill Gates to control and the Illuminati. You know, all that stuff. Yeah. David Sacks (00:15:22): I mean, this New York Times story is pretty remarkable. It's called politics science and then our marketable race for a coronavirus vaccine. This came out I think it just came out today in the New York Times. Actually, sorry. It's published It published November 21st, updated November 24th. And it's pretty remarkable. It describes the effort by Operation Warp Speed, by the administration. by Pfizer, by Moderna, kinda gives you the behind the scenes, play by play. And reading the article, you have to come away thinking that The Trump administration did a pretty good job with this whole warp speed project. I don't know if the New York Times realizes that it's making the Trump administration look so good or maybe they don't care anymore because he's he's lost the election. But the article does make the administration looked very good. I mean -- Competident. Speaker 1 (00:16:14): -- David Sacks (00:16:14): very competent. First of all, they shoveled money to the right people. They, you know, they they offered Pfizer money. Pfizer didn't want it or need it, but Moderna did. So they got a few $1,000,000,000 from Moderna. They parallel processed a bunch of different attempts here so that if one company failed. The others might succeed. There was a sort of a raking eye cutting of bureaucratic red tape wherever they could. There were examples in the story of a drug company needing something, some supplies or or what have you, and they would call the administration and they would, you know, make it happen. And then finally, the administration didn't do anything to to kind of mess with the science. You know? In fact, they describe how this the this new experimental mRNA technique that they used to generate the vaccine. They had the code for that within 2 days. They actually had the vaccine sort of printed, if you will, within weeks. And, really, what took all this time were the human trials with, you know, the 3 stage human trials, which the administration did not do anything to speed up. And probably the irony of ironies the supreme irony is there's a story there's a there's a bit in the story. It actually begins with the this guy, Slawi, who's the head of the Trump administration's effort to produce the vaccine, he actually slowed down the Moderna human trials by about 3 weeks because they weren't including enough minorities in the, you know, in the in the trial. And that cost him 3 weeks. If it weren't for those 3 weeks, Moderna's vaccine would have happened before Pfizer, and it would have come out about a week before the election. So you gotta wonder, like, Trump has gotta be pulling out his hair about Speaker 1 (00:17:58): -- Jason Calacanis (00:17:59): What hair? Speaker 1 (00:17:59): -- David Sacks (00:17:59): about about about this twist of fate Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:01): David, how does it attribute credit for Warp Speed? And I I'm going someplace with this, so I'm just asking you the question. David Sacks (00:18:09): Well, I don't the article is not trying to attribute credit. They're just kinda describing the behind the scenes of of how Pfizer Moderna came up with their vaccines. And It just but but in in describing you know, Pfizer Moderna did the work of creating the vaccine, but in describing the ways that Warp Speed contributed, they did things that were only helpful and nothing that was harmful. And so in that sense, it made the Trump administration look quite good. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:34): Yeah. I I think the point is that the the warp speed folks, which is probably the least well known working group working on coronavirus to the rest of the public is because there was a lot of wonky insiders. It was sign of almost proving the exact opposite of what Trump typically does, which is, you know, some idiotic nepotistic leaning where it's his daughter or is son-in-law running around, you know, completely and effectively, you know, doing something where they become sort of front and center for taking credit. In this case, it was just a bunch of policy walks. You never heard about the project. We only know about Workspeed because a handful of us have talked about it. And it it turns out to actually have been good because they knew what they were doing and they do enough to to not try to seek the credit and just got out of the way. I mean, it it proves almost the antithesis of how the Trump campaign you know, manage their time in the White House. David Sacks (00:19:24): Well, I mean, I I you have a point where, you know, I was kinda reading this article wondering you know, where was Jared Kushner? Because if Kushner knew about this, there's no way he slows down the Moderna vaccine by 3 weeks. I mean, that might have made the difference right there and whether Trump wins or not. Can you imagine the effect on the election if the vaccine had come out 1 week before November 3rd? Jason Calacanis (00:19:46): I think Trump would have won decidedly if he had a vaccine or 2 out with 90%, but I think he had no credibility. Even though Moderna and Pfizer were saying late November, and he said the vaccines are around the corner, His whole tenure was based on so much lying. He was the boy who cried wolf. He's he was the president who cried wolf by the time he told the truth, And he was telling the truth about the vaccines. He he it was like, oh my lord, he he told the truth in the final 3 months Well, can Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:18): I can I give you the opposite, David, of that, which is that if Moderna basically says, hey, guys. We have a vaccine that works for white people, and a disease that's, you know, disproportionately killing blacks and, you know, Hispanics and brown people, Native Americans, And all of a sudden, people are like, wait, what the fuck? Maybe they would have gone into Georgia and they would have just crushed them even more, and then you would have actually had the Senate flip too. So you could have had a whole kind of distribution of outcomes there in a different case because you could have had an angry reaction as well. We we don't know. I guess is my Speaker 1 (00:20:52): -- David Sacks (00:20:53): Well yeah. I mean, I I think it's ironic that an administration that was constantly accused of white supremacy probably lost the election because they slowed down this vaccine trial group to include more minorities. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:07): No. I know. But I think what we're saying is it wasn't the actual administration. It was somebody Speaker 1 (00:21:12): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:12): You know what we call that David? Speaker 1 (00:21:13): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:13): what they were doing. Jason Calacanis (00:21:14): We called that redemption in the movie when the person actually loses because they did the right thing as kind of redemption. Friedberg, when you look at these mRNA vaccines, you were educating us about them last night and also for a long time. Tell the audience just one more time how these work briefly and what the potential for them is in the future. because I think a lot of us now are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is gonna be over. We're gonna be at conferences or going traveling to Europe or whatever it is next summer. But we are are all gonna be scarred for life thinking, you know, when is the next coronavirus? Just like for a decade, we we were on pins and needles. When is the next 911? So this is gonna be scar tissue for a generation or 2 of people. When the next COVID comes, how quickly will Warp Speed 2.0 go? David Friedberg (00:22:09): Yeah. It's it's a it's the right question because our approach to doing vaccines may have just changed permanently. So, you know, every cell has your DNA, and DNA basically codes proteins. Every three letters of DNA makes an amino acid, codes for a specific amino acid. There's 20 amino acids. the way that DNA turns into proteins is through RNA. So RNA is kind of like a mirror copy of your DNA. It floats into these things called ribosomes in yourself and outcome proteins. And those it's like a printer. Right? And so those those ribosomes make your proteins. You think those amino acid sequences. coded by the RNA. So the way that the vaccines work historically is you'll get a dead virus, which is basically the protein of a virus your immune system then learns to kill that or to remove that protein. Oh, man. Jesus, my dog. your immune system then learns to remove that protein from your body, and that's how you develop this memory your immune memory to a specific protein. And so they put this dead r vaccine virus in your body, and, hopefully, your immune system learns a good response to it. mRNA basically puts the RNA in your body that codes for that protein. Your cells then make that protein. And because it's making a lot more of the protein in a more consistent, in a way, theoretically, the idea is your body develops a much more robust immune memory and immune response without it overloading your system with all the immune cells trying to wipe that protein out right away. and so on. The the challenge is you're putting RNA in your body. And we've always been worried about we don't know what the side effects of mixing RNA in your body would be. Is it gonna change your DNA? Is it gonna change your genetic makeup? Is it gonna cause other deleterious side effects? So this technology, this capability, this knowledge has been around forever I mean, not forever, but for, you know, a long time. And the idea has always been, we could use RNA in this way. But, you know, no one wanted and we've used it in animals, and we've used it in plants, and we've seen the capabilities of of using RNA to do different things like this, but this is a big leap. David Friedberg (00:24:08): And so, you know, we we kinda left forward here getting to the point that we felt comfortable with, you know, RNA as a as a treatment like this, and it's it's working. So in theory, in the future, as Saks points out, you could take any virus or any bacteria You could read its DNA. You could do that in an hour. Then you could take chunks of that DNA and code RNA for it so that your body makes those proteins a theoretically producing immune response. So That that's the the that's the science of, like, how do you how do you create a new David Sacks (00:24:33): vaccine that's taking on it. The amazing part is the way it's described you know, in this article is that it's almost like laser printing or 3 d printing a vaccine. It's kinda like the equivalent of that. You just take the genome of the virus and, you know, boom. You've got the vaccine. And then all the other delay is about human trials and testing of it. But imagine if that there there was the next coronavirus is ten times as deadly, you know, something that says, spreads as contangiously as smallpox and as, you know, as deadly as Ebola or something like that. We could have a vaccine the next day. You know? Like, you could We we could have a very Speaker 1 (00:25:12): -- Jason Calacanis (00:25:12): Challenge, David, would be as we'd have it the next day like we did here, but we would be going through this 3 phase trial. And so I want to take a moment here and talk to Chamath about something which is challenge trials. In the UK, they will start doing challenge trials for those people who don't know what a challenge trial is. essentially, they expose you to something dangerous, i e, a virus like COVID. And then they give you the vaccine, and then they give you the virus as opposed to how we do a 3 phase trial, which is you give the the vaccine to 30,000 people and a and a placebo to 30,000, and then you come back 3 months later and see how many people got infected, and it takes time and money. Whereas challenge trials only take risk on the individuals who are part of it. Tremoth, hundreds of people in the science community, signed a letter, And in the UK, they are gonna be doing the 1st challenge trials in January. The United States is not doing these. I'm certain China is. Do you think it's a moment in time where we need to think about the ethics and morality of challenge trials specifically. And then if so, How do you execute them with that? How do you execute a challenge trial without it being unfair or too dangerous for people? Obviously, you're not gonna just go into a prison and say, Anybody want to get 10 years off the sentence during the challenge trial? That seems morally bankrupt. But we let people climb mountains without rope. So Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:35): Right. Well, I I think this speaks to a whole bunch of other issues that we've talked about on the pod before. You know, another example of this was section 230 before when we talked about it. we had a body of law that was created in a moment of time that essentially was about framing and understanding a specific pathway and a way to use technologies that today look archaic. And we have to rewrite the laws in order to just compensate and understand for where we are. So if I if you double click on trials as an example, you know, if you have a solution for a rare disease, you can go in a specific pathway with the FDA and get breakthrough and fast track approval. But if you for example have, you know, a novel immunotherapy cancer drug, You probably you cannot. You know? You have to do a multi phase trial, a typical 3 phase trial. You have to solve for very to typical things like fatigue, etcetera, etcetera. All these things slow progress down. Now in a world where we were somewhat flying blind 40 or 50 years ago, we didn't have you know, things like CRISPR. We didn't have, you know, a real understanding of the genome. We didn't have delivery mechanisms like Carty. You would say, okay. Yeah. We should be really, really careful. But I would say that the more you know, the more you can ease up on the rules because you can actually empower people with a lot of information. And it shouldn't take a disaster scenario for us to be iterative and experimental. So I think the challenge trial is really important. I think the concept of the make a lot of sense. I think a lot of government should employ incentives to figure out who is eligible and why. But if you're a healthy adult male or female and you wanna participate in a trial for whatever set of reasons, you should be allowed to do so. And companies that wanna run those trials should be allowed to run them. Similarly, If you wanna find a complementary pathway through regulatory agencies to get drugs to the starting line, you should be able to do those too. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:37): And I think what we have to do is multi path these compounds going forward because I think that's where you accelerate all technologies' ability to actually solve these diseases. Jason Calacanis (00:28:48): Friedberg, why is it so controversial that a rocketship company or you know, people who wanna climb on mountains without ropes or or a rocket ship company, like, there are experimental pilots. We have astronauts. They they take unbelievable risk. We send thousands of troops into harms way for many different reasons, many of which sadly die. and they volunteer for those activities. Those people are volunteering and compensated. But when we look at science and we look at a challenge trial, scientists say this is morally reprehensible to compensate somebody for taking risk. When it that's exactly what we do army. We do it with police offers and we do it with astronauts. Help us understand how scientists think so differently than say war. David Friedberg (00:29:37): I I don't know if it's scientist as much as it is, you know, a regulatory framework like the some people would call it a nanny state, and, you know, there are things that the nanny state assumes individuals don't have the capacity to understand the extent of the potential loss or the or the nature of the risk. This is true for Angel Investing. Right? You have to be a qualified investor to invest in a private company without appropriate disclosures. and it's true in a lot of other contexts. So, you know, to to give people the authority to make decisions like this, it seems like my I'm I have no point of view that I'm kinda making here, but it seems like the the the the the the the government assumes or the the elected officials assume or the populist assumes that there are things that people aren't really equipped to make decisions on because they can't understand the risk because they're not qualified, and that and they get excluded from those activities. But Saks is the Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:32): Saks, how Jason Calacanis (00:30:32): should we reframe this? David Friedberg (00:30:34): Yeah. Yeah. David Sacks (00:30:35): Well, I think -- Or how should we Jason Calacanis (00:30:36): frame it? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:37): Yeah. David Sacks (00:30:37): I think assumption of risk is is a is a really good principle. and it it is a way for people to engage in potentially harmful behaviors. Just because the behavior is potentially harmful, doesn't mean you don't get to do it. In the United States, you're allowed to do things that are manifestly harmful to yourself. like smoking. Well -- You know? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:59): Even even even worse. If you're in Oregon, you can now do all kinds of hard drugs. I mean, you can assume that risk for yourself. So You know, if if in Portland, Oregon, you can now take heroin openly in the street with no consequence, but you can't participate in a trial that could basically cure a cancer, that's insane to me. David Friedberg (00:31:17): I'll tell you the yeah. I'll tell you I'll I'll tell you the flip side of it. you're allowed in Nevada to play roulette. I mean, what the fuck? Like, you know, it's got a negative expected value statistically factually for individuals, but the individual doesn't have the capacity generally speaking that's playing roulette to recognize that every dollar they're spending at the roulette table is likely going to be to to you know, taken away from them. Like, there's some percentage of that that's gonna be taken away. There's a 5 percentage for the house on that on that game. And and so we make the argument in some cases that people don't have the capacity to understand risk. But in other cases, it's okay for them to not have the capacity to to to to take risk. And I think that there is this no of what some people call regulatory capture that probably encompasses both of these, which is that there is some degree of profiteering that has created some set of laws that kind of manifestly capture that system in a certain way. So there are profitable casino enterprises that say, let's get people to spend their money in a risky way that they don't understand. And that becomes the law, and then people in Nevada are allowed to do that. There are also pharmaceutical companies that will say we need to have huge regulatory burdens. So once we make that big investment and we get patent approval and we can lock in that drug, we can charge you a lot of money for it. So I would argue to some extent that the regulatory capture associated with the profit hearing that happens on the back end in pharmaceuticals has, in large part, driven the structure around risk taking in drug trials, particularly in the US. I mean, you can go get whatever drug you want over the counter in Mexico. Right? I mean, we have a very different system. It's the most it also happens to be the most expensive in the world. and the the rationale is, well, you're the most protected. David Friedberg (00:32:54): Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:54): Well, the dry the drug infrastructure here is created to your point because of regulation. The entire you know, CRO Industry, which is a multi multibillion dollar industry, which basically is essentially a retardent of r and d velocity. Right? Its entire job is to slow things down, create these double blinded studies, by the way and so many of these studies are not even double blinded. They're not even actually scientifically rigorous. They get basically blown apart after the fact. So what are they really in the business of doing? It's because they're they're exploiting a business model that was created by laws, laws that were written by regulators, regulators that were in the hands of lobbyists, None of those folks truly understood at the time, but especially today what's really possible. So, you know, it it does not make sense in the United States of America. Just writ large simply put that you can buy alcohol and drink yourself into the ground, buy cigarettes and smoke yourself to death, you know, jump David Friedberg (00:33:51): on -- -- away your money. Speaker 1 (00:33:52): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:52): gamble away your money where your negative EV or open you know, openly do illicit drugs. but you can't participate in a thoughtful trial backed by scientific research. Jason Calacanis (00:34:03): In fairness, Chamath, you can get away with smoking fentanyl in San Francisco and Oregon, but it is illegal to use that plastic straw. So be careful, folks. The laws are very clear here that plastic straw is gonna get screwed in a lot of trouble. David Friedberg (00:34:19): I don't know what the fine is, but it is I mean, it Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:24): it wouldn't it wouldn't be so crazy if it were true, but to your point, like, you would actually get arrested for having a plastic bag than you will for having Fentanyl in in San Francisco. Jason Calacanis (00:34:32): Absolutely. They'll they'll arrest you for the bag that the fentanyl's in, but Chesobuddin will not arrest you for the fentanyl in the plastic bag. Stacks, we've totally lost the script, but Chamath sort of bridge this with the Speaker 1 (00:34:46): 230 Jason Calacanis (00:34:48): discussion of common carrier and hey, you know, we we had great intent with this law, but nobody saw social networks becoming this dominant, addictive, etcetera. So we need to be more nimble as a government in in changing these regulations, whether it's straws, fentanyl, challenge trials, or 230. You wrote a blog post about it. after we had our 2:30 discussion, a lot of people started talking about it. Have you come to some conclusion as to an exit ramp for 2:30 or a way to maintain it without know, throwing the baby with the bath water. David Sacks (00:35:20): Yeah. Yeah. Well okay. Just kinda make one concluding thought on Speaker 1 (00:35:24): -- David Sacks (00:35:24): Sure. Of course. Speaker 1 (00:35:24): -- David Sacks (00:35:24): the laptop. So The reason why innovations happen so fast on the Internet is because of, you know, one word, permissionless. Right? Permissionless innovation. Nobody you as an idea for a startup needs to go get permission from someone in the government, you know, repeatedly. That's really what makes a difference. You know? Mark Zuckerberg as a you know, software in college can just build his project, Larry and Sergey as PhD students can just build their project, ship it, start, you know, getting users, and they don't have to get the permission of a regulator. Whose incentive, by the way, is just typically not to get fired by approving something that might rebound on them in some, you know, in some bad way. And Jason Calacanis (00:36:03): to keep their job. Yeah. David Sacks (00:36:05): keep their job. I mean, imagine if, you know, imagine just take it like a random example when Elon launched Starman. Remember when he put the Like -- Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:36:13): -- David Sacks (00:36:14): he he launched the Tesla into space, and there's, like, a astronaut in there, and it was, like, this kinda really cool moment. I assume he just did I assume he didn't get permission from anybody to do it. But could a moment like that have really happened if he did have to get permission? No way. It'd be like making its way it through the chain or would know what to think of it. No one would know whether they could be the one to approve it. And then what if something goes wrong? What if the Tesla comes back down to earth and, you know, turns into a meteor or whatever, those scenarios that'd be running through their heads, nobody would have allowed it. Right? And so when you just let entrepreneurs do things, like, good things happened. Right? And and that's why we've had so much progress on the Internet. And in some of these other areas, we've had much less progress because you know, what what a system like that selects for is your ability to go lobby regulators as opposed to just building your project and shipping it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:07): I think that one of the things that maybe happens is that, you know, we we are all expecting or maybe some of us I have definitely some version of a new deal and some grand bargain. And I wonder maybe whether the new deal and our sort of, like, our version of FDR over the next I don't know, 10th years is the person that actually says, guys, we're gonna have a wholesale rewrite of the regulatory infrastructure to account for technology. Just period. We're gonna start someplace reasonable and small, and we're gonna make common sense reforms just observing the times as they exist today. Right? And we're gonna go and systematically try to make these industries a little bit more resilient, a little bit more entrepreneurial, you know, a little bit less corrupted by regulatory capture and lobbyists and laws that just don't make sense a 100 years later. David Sacks (00:37:58): the the I mean, it'd be great if we could do that. The reason we can't is because how do you reform the law without the lobbyists getting their fingers in it? Right? And and the problem is there there's no there's no lobbyist for the company that doesn't exist yet, right, for the founder, the entrepreneur who's got an idea in their head, but they haven't built their company yet. There's nobody representing that person Jason Calacanis (00:38:20): in Washington. David Sacks (00:38:21): Right? And what happens is You get new regulations in Washington. Some agency gets created. They reach out and touch an industry. Now every player that's affected has to create their own lobbying you know, organization. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:34): Not true. And, David, what if you think about this? What if the the advocate for the entrepreneur or the uncreated company and uncreated product is really the same as just individual civil liberties and rights. how are they really that different? Because really what it's doing is saying, the entrenched organizational infrastructure that runs my life gets deconstructed and then power gets pushed down to be the individual. That's tantamount to the same thing, I think. Jason Calacanis (00:39:03): Well, we we have seen some David Sacks (00:39:05): We have seen some pushback. Jason Calacanis (00:39:07): Well, I mean, I there is some silver lining here. If you look right now, the citizens of California, obviously, people have been fleeing, and we've been talking about California and and the one party system here causing so many problems. But we did have Prop Speaker 1 (00:39:19): 22 Jason Calacanis (00:39:21): pass, and we now have 900,000 people have signed to recall governor Newsom, and these seem to be some pushback against this sort of nanny state where people can't make decisions. And then additionally, today, the SEC announced that they will allow gig working companies to give stock to employees. as part of their compensation, up to Speaker 1 (00:39:51): 15% Jason Calacanis (00:39:51): of their compensation. In fact, Hester how do I pronounce her last name? It's not Pierce. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:00): You can't pronounce the word Pierce? David Sacks (00:40:02): purse. purse. Jason Calacanis (00:40:03): purse. No. It's spelled Pierce, but it's a hester purse. Is it worth following on the Twitter, h e s t e r p e RCE. Hester Pers, I had her on my pocket so we can start ups. And she they're they're really getting aggressive in changing the accreditation loss. So anybody be able to be an accredited investor who's become sophisticated through a testing mechanism. And now they wanna let gig workers get equity compensation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:26): Here's a perfect example of a regulatory body and infrastructure that actually has changed with the times. I think the SEC In in fact, I've I've I think maybe we talked about this a little bit the last time. I actually think one of the best Trump appointees has been Jake Clayton. And I actually think Jay Clayton has done an incredibly good job. And a lot of what he's done is just deconstruct this kind of nanny state and say people can become educated and make good decisions for themselves. And because it's in some it's in an area that's relatively benign, i. e. investing, People kind of just let it happen without a lot of pushback and everybody kind of generally supports it. Democrats support it, Republicans support it, and the outcomes are really good to your point, Jason, which is In a world of zero rates, how do you expect any just, you know, average ordinary middle American who just works a decent job to save for their retirement to actually make enough money. Well, they're gonna have to get educated, and they're gonna have to find a way of putting their money to work in in in assets that have a better return, which literally was illegal up until very recently. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:41:30): I mean, we you were having an -- You were systematically letting the rich stay rich. And you were blocking the poor from having an opportunity to advance. Like, what if Apple Store employees could get their paycheck and say, I want to take my paycheck 70% cash, 30%, you know, restricted stock units at this discount. Like, we could let Apple Store employees make you know, a $1,000,000 after 5 or 10 years of working there, 10, 20 years from now, and have generational wealth changed. David Sachs, you had comment. David Sacks (00:42:00): Well, I was gonna ask, do you think this type of deregulation is gonna happen in the Biden administration? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:06): Yes. David Sacks (00:42:06): because what you're discussing is, like, a very really kind of classical Republican or Reagan idea. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:12): I I agree. And and and I think what's gonna happen is you're I think you're gonna continue to see deregulation in areas that are benign and noncontroversial. So I think the SEC, the FCC, I think all of these places, you'll see movement. I think you'll probably actually see a lot more choice and deregulation effectively in in Medicare and CMMI, I think those places will move first. And then I think it'll be up to some leader politician to then really rally the troops on some higher order bits. And one of the biggest high order bits would be sort of around the broader health care infrastructure, Social Security, Education. Education. Education is probably the biggest one. That's that's like the it's just too sacrosanct for the democrats. You cannot get elected without the teachers. And so unless there is a startup that completely disrupts teacher pay and teacher compensation, then the public school teachers' unions will continue to dominate a lot of the federal and state policy. For the worst, unfortunately. Jason Calacanis (00:43:26): Friedberg, if you had one regulation or series of regulations or regulatory body, you would most like to see change for the good of humanity and, you know, Americans and and the rest of the humans on the planet, what would it be? David Friedberg (00:43:44): Probably helped. Yeah. It's probably the drug process, the drug development process. You know, there was a a gene editing program that ran and someone died So it's what year was this? Speaker 1 (00:44:00): 97, 99. David Friedberg (00:44:02): And they basically halted all gene editing programs for 13 years. know how many people died during that time? It was fucking it's a crazy, crazy fact. where, you know, there are the you know, the the one death is too many rule, you know, based basically doesn't take into account the the kind of broader implications on the downside. So, yeah, I I think that one probably pretty important. But, you know, there's a good interview. If you if you wanna hear some interesting thoughts and, again, not trying to be an advocate for any political point of view, But Charles Coke goes on Tim Ferriss. Have you guys heard this podcast interview? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:43): I've listened to it. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:44:44): Yeah. And he he highlights a couple of really good examples about this regulatory cap problem. Like, if you're poor and you wanna become a hairdresser and, you know, start a a salon or go work at a salon and make money cutting hair, the cost and the burden for you to go get the necessary approvals from the Cosmetician Association is to burdensome for, you know, the average person who's poor needs to become a hairdresser. And it's just insane that you can't just go be a hairdresser. Jason Calacanis (00:45:13): The government government needs to ensure that people don't get bad haircuts. David Friedberg (00:45:17): You can say it's worse. It's worse. Yeah. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:19): You could you you can you don't need a license. to be the engineer that writes the machine learning code that either drives a car autonomously or that, you know, helps propel disinformation in a social network, but you do need to have a license to give someone a buzz cut. David Friedberg (00:45:37): Oh, that's a bingo statement right there. Jason Calacanis (00:45:39): Yeah. I mean, in fairness, I'm I am checking out Saks's new haircut here, and I'm kinda thinking Speaker 1 (00:45:44): -- David Friedberg (00:45:45): So that should be more regulation? Jason Calacanis (00:45:46): There might Speaker 1 (00:45:47): -- David Sacks (00:45:47): I was practicing without a license. Jason Calacanis (00:45:49): You were. David Sacks (00:45:50): I mean -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:50): But you know what I mean? We we we David Friedberg (00:45:52): can't see the result of this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:53): You can David Friedberg (00:45:54): pay 1 think this went through. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:55): I mean, you Saxx, you're so you're so white and pale. You're you're blending it to the background shade. It's impossible see where your skin ends, your hair starts, and the shape. David Friedberg (00:46:06): But I feel like the the the regulatory if you think about the framework, you know, it extends into education too. Like, you can't go get an entry level job without a quote unquote college degree. How fucking useful is a college philosophy degree to someone trying to get an entry level job working at x, y, or z bank. Right? Like, it's it's a bit absurd that the structure is set up so that there are whether it's, you know, government or not, but there is effectively a hurdle, which is this alternative to regulatory capture, but it's like, call it embedded system, you know, capture. Like, there is a significant kind of hurdle that you have to get through that costs a lot, and the the point of entry has gotten too high for most. And it really stalls things out, and it's gonna cause more damage than good. Jason Calacanis (00:46:47): Well, and it's also been completely disconnected from the reality of your employment potential. People are going into debt for $200,000 in a liberal arts degree that provides no scale that is Speaker 1 (00:46:58): -- David Friedberg (00:46:58): Do we all agree that that makes sense? Like, does anyone on this in this group argue for meeting a bachelor's degree for everyone. No. I mean Speaker 1 (00:47:04): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:04): I don't think I I I think I think it's useless. Jason Calacanis (00:47:08): What do you guys think of ISAs? Income sharing, agree, These have become kind of a Lambda school does them. A bunch of other schools. David, you saw a startup we just invested in that's doing them you liked them at the demo day. We did with Craft. Maybe, you know, this idea is who should take the risk? for an education. And when you look at an ISA and income sharing agreement, what they're saying is the school takes the risk. They let you come to school, for free. They give you what would be the equivalent of, let's say, a $15,000 coding camp or growth marketer risk. then you pay double that amount over 5, 6, 7 years as a percentage of your income. But if you don't get income, if you don't break 50 k a year, You don't have to pay it back. And if you decide to go back to school or your income drops below 50, you don't have to do it. Can you imagine if a college had to make that promise? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:57): They should do it. They should start in college sports, but they should do it. Imagine you you know, Duke basically went recruited kids and said, listen. We're gonna pay you to come to Duke. gonna get you educated. We're gonna teach you how to play basketball better than anybody else, and we're gonna take 5% of your future earnings, yes or no. You're not gonna have to go to boosters, you're not gonna have to take money, you're not gonna have to do any of this stuff on the side, but just be your best, learn to play the game, We'll get your reasonable education. We'll give you a good infrastructure, and we take 5% of the back end. Jason Calacanis (00:48:27): With a cap. So you could cap the upside. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:30): Or maybe there's maybe there's no cap and and but but why do we always have to care about all of this? Like, it's like, you know, it's like, whatever. Maybe it's 5% for the rest of your life. You're gonna pay the government 50%, you get nothing in return. So if you pick 5% and you get Coach Kay to teach how to shoot a jumper, it's better than that. Right? So why why isn't it possible? And I remember how people had this unbelievably paternalistic allergic reaction to income sharing agreements when they were first talked about Speaker 1 (00:48:55): -- Jason Calacanis (00:48:55): They called them indentured servitude -- Modern slavery. Speaker 1 (00:48:58): -- Jason Calacanis (00:48:58): to slave And it was Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:59): like -- Oh my Jason Calacanis (00:48:59): god. -- so insulting to Speaker 1 (00:49:01): -- David Friedberg (00:49:01): But it's so different it's so different than signing a contract with an agent to represent you when you first start out in any industry, music, or or sports or film or whatever. 1 you could sign a agency agreement where the agents are rep for 10, 20 years. Right? I mean, some of those agreements can have long tails on them, and that's effectively the same. You know? Look at the uneven waist. Speaker 1 (00:49:19): -- Jason Calacanis (00:49:19): had a cap. Look at Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:20): look at we we can talk about this in a second, but, like, you know, did you see what with Chappelle the last couple of days where Jason Calacanis (00:49:26): Chappelle -- Let's go. Yeah. Did you watch the video? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:29): I loved it. Yeah. The video is incredible. Video is incredible. So the the the quick story on this Chappell basically did he had a request. He went to Netflix, then he said, take down Chappell show. Netflix took it down. And he did a little stand up his Instagram. It's like 18 minutes. It's it's fabulous as most Chapelle stuff. Peak Chapelle. Peak Chapelle. And he basically told this story, which essentially, the punch line is, like, you know, he signed a contract where he just got completely fucked. And he's like, this is happening every single day in so many markets. And so the idea that then you have actually a different market, which disrupts something by actually creating transparency and something reasonable is all of a sudden completely immoral makes no sense to me. So there's abuses happening all the time. That is what the the contract that Chapelle signed was indentured servitude. He doesn't even have the rights to his name. He cannot -- -- to his name. likeness. Jason Calacanis (00:50:24): Right? Yeah. He if he wants to create the Dave chimpel show again, he's at the call of the DC show. David Friedberg (00:50:27): But this is a perfect Speaker 1 (00:50:28): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:29): Somebody owns his name. What the fuck? Jason Calacanis (00:50:32): in perpetuity in all mediums and platforms from Speaker 1 (00:50:34): -- David Friedberg (00:50:34): This is a perfect tieback to the earlier statement about, you know, do you have the appropriate kind of understanding of the risk you're taking or the benefit that you're getting. I think Kanye's been doing this whole thing about he doesn't own the masters to his music originally. Right? At the moment that he signed that contract when he signed over all the masters, you know, master recordings and all the future revenue rights to his music, he was getting paid a ton of money in his mind at that time. He said, oh my gosh. I'm getting whatever it was. Let's say it's $5,000,000. I'm getting $5,000,000. Most amount of money I've ever seen It is absolutely worth me giving over the masters of this music and the future royalty rights to this music for 12 songs or whatever it is. for me to get $5,000,000 today, and I can live an amazing life. It will change everything for me. Who is to say that he was not you know, of the appropriate sound mind and understanding to decide in that moment to take that $5,000,000 and give up all future royalties to his music. Jason Calacanis (00:51:27): Well, Chapelle's Chappelle's argument was, the people who are in that ecosystem or all friends, they're all working together and they've commoditized the artist. And they collude to do this kind of upside limiting deals. And I think what makes Silicon Valley so special is that we collude the other direction. We want people to have equity participation, and we want the social contract of Silicon Valley is I'm giving you equity. I hope you're your penny stock becomes worth $1500 and that you create multi generational wealth and you become an angel in this. David Friedberg (00:52:01): But I don't know. Look, if I if I'm an angel in investor or wanna be an angel investor. And some Schmo tricks me into investing in his shitty company, and I just lose $20,000 but I didn't know how to determine whether that company was shitty or not because I've never done investing before. Read my book. Is it for the government to regulate that circumstance and say, you know what? You need to be a quote unquote qualified investor to be able to discern a good company for a bad company or bullshit from not. And that's gonna Jason Calacanis (00:52:24): mean and David Friedberg (00:52:24): the same for these contracts. Right? Like, I mean so, you know, we're making the argument, I think, for the the, you know, the regulatory framework for preventing people from being able to have freedom of choice. And I think, like, earlier, you know, that the case was made, like, people should be able to make have freedom of choice at any point. Why should the government kinda step in and make it efficient for me? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:41): I think that there I'm not I'm not advocates advocating for government intervention. My my only point is that there are morally reprehensible things that are happening today using contracts and that, you know, something like an income sharing agreement actually rights the ship in so many ways. David Friedberg (00:52:57): That's definitely the burden of capitalism. Ultimately, it it it evolves to that, right, where, like, oh, you're sick. You're you have cancer. Pay me a $1,000,000. I'll give you this drug. David Sacks (00:53:05): So Hollywood's a little bit of its own beast where there's all these gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers are always trying to get control over, you know, the creative product. And so, yeah, like, you know, signing contracts with those sharks is always a dangerous thing to do. I think Silicon Valley is very different. We have much more of a culture of of equity. I think the income share agreements are much more in that vain. And I think they're a great idea for, like, any trade that demonstrably increases your earning power. Right? So the beauty of Lambda School is they pay for you to get an education being a coder. It then increases your salary, and they get a piece of that. That's like a win win for everybody. I think where this goes, if these ISAs are successful is that every trade that's valuable will get its own ISA type school And then that gets peeled out of a university education. So what's left for colleges to do is basically all the stuff that doesn't add value. Jason Calacanis (00:54:06): They're museums. They're they're basically, like, these monasteries again. Right? They go back to being monasteries, not places where you get skills. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:14): we need to set we need to celebrate vocational capability because I think, like, you know, we have we have so celebrated this mythical bachelor's degree and it just means fucking nothing. It, like, it does learn Jason Calacanis (00:54:26): a trade Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:26): learn a trade, and that's just as frankly, that should be as respected or more. But in in the American culture, You don't do that right now. I've never understood that. If you go, for example, to different countries around the world, Europe's a good example actually of this. because it's the closest analog in terms of quality of living to America. There's a real celebration of people who choose vocational tradecraft because there's an entire educational infrastructure that you can onboard yourself into. You can become a skilled person and you can have a really good decent life. Jason Calacanis (00:54:57): And -- And there's pride in the work. Speaker 1 (00:54:58): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:59): and there's pride in that work. And in America, you know, you covet this piece of paper. The piece of paper is really just a scam that allows, you know, administrators to basically pay themselves 1,000,000 of dollars and or run an asset management business as a the Trojan horse of that purpose. it just doesn't make any sense. And so, you know, I don't know. It's I I just think if I just think Speaker 1 (00:55:21): -- Jason Calacanis (00:55:22): The most amazing thing about these companies, I've I've been digging into them because I'm looking for more to invest in. And these company these companies that are the trade schools that are based on themselves on ISIS, and they are ones who welding and plumbing and all kinds of different things. And there are ISA platforms that are providing ISAs to any school that wants them in doing, like, the sort of AWS of ISIS. Anyway, these fur what this firm told me was inside of one of these trade schools, they spend 50% of their time on placement, 50% on education. And that out of college, they spend 99 point x amount of time on the education in less than Speaker 1 (00:56:02): 1% Jason Calacanis (00:56:03): on placement, which kinda attracts. Right? I mean, when we went to college, I don't know if it's changed much, but the career services center was like this two person office like in the worst part of campus. And they don't when you're doing an ISA, If you accept more people who are unqualified and can't aren't ready for the education and are not motivated for it, it works against you because they're not gonna pay back the ISA. So you then get sharper. You know? You sharpen the blade of who gets accepted. You start accepting the right people. These colleges, they would accept anybody who would come in and take the loans. That was your qualifier is, did you pass your loan? David Sacks (00:56:40): The ISA is a service idea. It's a brilliant idea. So I would invest in that. I I like that idea as an investment way better than running one of these schools. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:50): You David Sacks (00:56:50): know? That that that's basically issuing the ices themselves. But how amazing is that that we live in a country where people are willing to you know, as a movement now, people are willing to fund your education, because they know it's gonna increase your earning power, and then they'll get paid on the back end. That's, like, fantastic. And, like, that's all, like, happening all that innovation is happening right now without the government needing to get involved or a big government loan program -- And Jason Calacanis (00:57:15): the historical last Speaker 1 (00:57:16): -- -- David Sacks (00:57:16): people aren't getting saddled. People aren't getting saddled with all Jason Calacanis (00:57:18): of that. literally, like, the Voxes and the New York Times of the world. And, like -- Yeah. But, I mean, actually, David Friedberg (00:57:25): debt change it. -- is having a $250,000 debt that you've gotta paid you can never get rid of in bankruptcy for the rest of your life. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:31): Yeah. That that's real indentured service. I think the problem is that, you know, East Coast left leaning editorial publications, they have to themselves justify their Speaker 1 (00:57:43): $190,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:46): bachelor philosophy from Oberland College. So, you know, if you if you take that -- You David Friedberg (00:57:52): know, come up. Oberland is the number one listener base we have on this podcast. Yeah. You just lost -- Yeah. David Sacks (00:57:57): No. But you're right. Once you've taken out every valuable trade and and moved them from a university where you gotta pay a 100,000 a year to a an ISA where it costs you nothing. Like, what's left? Is this gonna be people studying Cisco? Oh, yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:58:10): People think -- -- sectionality intersectionality standards. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:13): There'll there'll be -- the past. They'll be studying the past. Jason Calacanis (00:58:16): Yeah. What a disaster. It collapse upon itself. Alright. As we wrap up here, Let's just take a moment to think about what some people are calling the big reset. It's Thanksgiving. we have a change in management in the country, which is is obviously polarizing. So I'll put that aside. But I think what's happened with these vaccines and science is truly miraculous And let's face it. A lot of people is a lot of pain and suffering this year. A lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of people lost their restaurants. A lot of people are suffering from mental illness. some people are having to take care of their kids and get to know them. I mean, it's been hard for a lot of people. Sorry about that, Saxx. I wasn't directing it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:55): Do you know your children's names now? Yeah. David Sacks (00:58:58): I I do now. I mean Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:59): Damon, that's like Jason Calacanis (00:59:00): what's it like to spend Speaker 1 (00:59:01): 3 Jason Calacanis (00:59:01): hours with one of your children? David Friedberg (00:59:03): You've got flash cards in front of him right now. They're taking the back, enabling on this side. Jason Calacanis (00:59:09): Oh, it's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:09): a briddle. Jason Calacanis (00:59:10): So, anyway, I was trying to be sincere. David Sacks (00:59:12): The kids would even occasionally run into my office during COVID. Do you know? Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:59:16): And they wanna talk to you and hug you and show affection. David Sacks (00:59:18): Crazy. They're David Friedberg (00:59:19): like excuse me, sir. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:20): Who are you about your father? Jason Calacanis (00:59:22): Actually, I have Speaker 1 (00:59:24): -- David Sacks (00:59:25): I thought I was just working for my office, and all these kids show up and tell me it's their home. So Speaker 1 (00:59:30): -- Jason Calacanis (00:59:31): Well, we I just wanted to announce to the all in audience that we have upgraded Friedberg and Saksis chips just last week. Chipmoth and I pushed the update for the Joy 1 point have an update. And how's it been going to the 2 Davids now that you have a third emotion? David Friedberg (00:59:47): We now have emotion of joy. Do not use it for feels good at warm inside body. Jason Calacanis (00:59:54): Do not use it all in same day. Spread it out over a month. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:58): Hey, David. Did you think that Trump actually resigned 2 days ago. Was that was that was that the equivalent of a res like or the concession tweet? David Sacks (01:00:06): It it was acceptance. of you're talking about when they he authorized the GSA to Speaker 1 (01:00:12): -- David Sacks (01:00:12): Yeah. -- release transition funds to Biden. Yeah. I mean, that that that was his concession. right there. That that's that's basically what you're gonna get out of him. That's his acceptance of the of the election result. Jason Calacanis (01:00:23): So after anger, he is now went into bargaining, and then he was depressed, and now he's accepting? David Sacks (01:00:31): Well, what what basically happened is, you you know, you had Rudy and Sydney Powell and, you know, that legal team going to court to try and challenge all these rules the whack pack. Yeah. Try and go to court challenged all these root rulings. I think Rudy was, like, 135, meaning I think he won won ruling and lost Speaker 1 (01:00:49): 35. David Sacks (01:00:50): So it was going very, very poorly. Jason Calacanis (01:00:51): So like you versus Allen Keating. Go ahead. David Sacks (01:00:53): Yeah. But the thing yeah. Thanks. That's a whole separate story we'll get into. But But the thing that really, like, ended it was when Sydney Powell came out with this elaborate conspiracy theory that actually Trump lost the election because communist code writers had effectively, you know, infected this the the software that was running the the election and somehow Hugo Chavez was behind this even though he's been dead for 7 years. Hugo, got us again. And the and the Republican Governor of Georgia and Secretary of State were in on it. Anyway, it was so wild and crazy that basically the narrative just cracked And so then you had, like, Steve Schwartzman come out and then sort of the Republican business community and and Pat Tumi, you know, Republican Center from Pennsylvania came out. And they all just said, look. This is this is ridiculous. And so that that was the moment, I think, at which the this narrative that the election was stolen kind of cracked as and I think she kinda she did everyone a favor by being so, like, off the reservation that it just brought the whole thing to, like, a a meltdown. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:03): Sydney Powell always whenever I see her, I always I I just think that she's one second away from her dentures flying out of her mouth and hitting the camera. Jason Calacanis (01:02:11): I mean, that's your crazy aunt. That's the crazy aunt at Thanksgiving. Like, she Speaker 1 (01:02:15): -- David Sacks (01:02:15): She said she was gonna release the kraken, and I guess she met the Speaker 1 (01:02:18): -- Jason Calacanis (01:02:18): I think she met smoked the David Sacks (01:02:19): rack. -- Rudy's I think it was the hair dye running down Rudy's face. Jason Calacanis (01:02:23): That's exactly. That's the cracking. Rudy's the cracking. I mean, I'm I'm glad that David Sacks (01:02:28): It was a total meltdown. It was a total shit show. Jason Calacanis (01:02:31): I'm glad the GOP finally after Trump's defeat decided with Speaker 1 (01:02:36): 55 Jason Calacanis (01:02:37): days left to go that they would take a stand against. David Sacks (01:02:41): Well, let me let me tell you what I think Jason Calacanis (01:02:42): is gonna happen now. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:43): What let David Sacks (01:02:43): me tell you what I think is gonna happen is I think that this New York Times article, we talked about at the top of the show about the fact this operation warp speed that it was a big success I think that the the best narrative for Trump, if he wants to maintain this idea that he was robbed, is not that he was sort of legally robbed with fake votes or fake voting software. But rather, just that if these pharma companies have put out the news a week earlier Speaker 1 (01:03:07): -- Jason Calacanis (01:03:08): Yes. Speaker 1 (01:03:08): -- David Sacks (01:03:08): it would have meaningfully changed like and I think he has an amazing story there. Jason Calacanis (01:03:13): I would agree with him. David Sacks (01:03:14): Yeah. And it's kinda like, you know, when you have, like, a major sporting event, there's, like, a bad call by the rest. And all the fans basically said, oh, we were robbed. Well, you can't get that, like, result overturned. It is what it is. You lost. But you have a talking point forever that you lost. I mean, if you go to Saint Louis or whatever and you mention the name Speaker 1 (01:03:36): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:03:36): asterisk There's David Sacks (01:03:37): Yeah. There's an asterisk. Yeah. You go and say Jason Calacanis (01:03:39): what it is. But -- When the National Lebron Association suspended Draymond and that series. David Sacks (01:03:44): There there are all these sporting events with asteriskes by them. I mean, like, you know, if you go to St. Louis and mention the name Don Denenger, you know, people will know what you're talking about. The I think the car -- Oh, no. Seriously. He he was he the the Saint Louis Cardinals lost the Speaker 1 (01:03:58): 85 David Sacks (01:03:58): world series because of the 1st base umpire's call, or at least that's their view of it. Right? And so I think, you know, what what Trump can do is is say that, look. The we were robbed because we never got credit for the vaccine. Now if I I do think the economy is gonna bounce back really strong next year be because of the vaccines. Right? I I think you gotta say that if these vaccines and COVID in the next 3, 4, 5 months, 2021 is gonna be a great year. So if Trump hands Biden these vaccines and the economy does well next year, but something bad happens between now 4 years from now, he'll say, I handed this guy everything on a silver platter. He screwed it up. And that'll be his narrative for 4 years from now. Could could happen. I'm just saying Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:43): What do you what do you think about what do you guys think about the pic so far? David Friedberg (01:04:48): Janet yellen for Treasury Secretary is great. Jason Calacanis (01:04:51): Thank god. It's not Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:54): I mean, she she's she's part Jason Calacanis (01:04:55): of the party. David Friedberg (01:04:56): Well, I do think the biggest I I do think the biggest challenge we're gonna face is is this monetary policy issue. I mean, the dollar is is you know, in decline. We printed 30 percent of the US dollar since circulation in the last 6 months, and everyone's cheering that the DAO is at 30,000. It's like, well, you know, this 30 percent more dollars. So everything's gonna inflate. So I think there's a lot of work to do. It's great to have someone sitting in seat who understands economic policy really clearly and and and the tide of monetary policy. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:27): Yeah. I think the picks so far have been have been really really top notch. Tony Blinken, friend of a couple of hours for secretary of state. He's a star. Yellen's a dove, which I think is really good for just, you know Speaker 1 (01:05:40): -- David Friedberg (01:05:40): Did you guys know the chief of staff? Sacks, do you know who this guy? He's been, like, Biden's aid for a long time, kinda. Is that the deal? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:47): Ron Blaine. He's a founder of revolution with Steve Case. Jason Calacanis (01:05:50): Yeah. Yeah. He comes from a venture background David Friedberg (01:05:52): with Ukraine. David Sacks (01:05:52): All of Biden's picks have been people who've been long time washing hands who he's had personal relationships with for a long time. He really seems to value that personal loyalty. And they've also been kind of, you know, nice and boring, safe Speaker 1 (01:06:06): -- Jason Calacanis (01:06:06): A fidget. Speaker 1 (01:06:06): -- David Sacks (01:06:07): experience pissed. I think he's delivering on kinda what he promised to Speaker 1 (01:06:11): -- David Sacks (01:06:12): Normally. -- which is a president we can forget about. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:06:15): Just toe toe tone it down. That's his David Sacks (01:06:17): hobby. -- caretaker president. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:06:19): What do we do without Trump to talk about on this podcast because it's been about Speaker 1 (01:06:23): 34%. Jason Calacanis (01:06:24): We're gonna need a new topic to to rotate in here. We might need to put in little Netflix As we wrap here, what are you thankful for? And what are you most looking forward to next year? vis a vis just it's been a rough year. I mean, listen, it's been nice for people's equity portfolios, of course. But it's it's really what do you hope for America, for humanity, for yourselves, for your family, for your friends? You know, what are you thankful for? And then I'll let Friedberg. It looks like your processing unit has delivered a result. So let's hear it. David Friedberg (01:06:59): The emotion bank has been cleared. That was how we hit. It's look. I don't think that this year was any any cup of tea for anyone. So I think like everyone, you kinda value your friendships and your family. So it's it's been a it's been a year you know, going into COVID, I was in the office every day, spending more time at home being closer to my children. I know their names, by the way, Saxx. I'll I'll teach you how to learn them. there it's been it's been actually really special being at home a lot and being with the family a lot and realizing, like, how much that stuff matters and how being close to everyone Because when you're in the run of the life before you kinda get knocked back and just put everything in perspective, you miss those moments. So that's been really special and important to me this year in a really kind of personal way. And just having friendships, right, I mean, it's great for us to all be able to to talk as we do every day and have people you can kinda connect with. Even if you're not sitting in in person, I do think that everyone realizes they need that. So, anyway, it's been a it's been an insightful year. Money aside, it's yeah. I was fucking terrorized, and it started this year about money. And at the end of the year, Jason Calacanis (01:08:09): Here you go. Finally -- There it David Friedberg (01:08:10): is. It's all a fucking roller coaster. Jason Calacanis (01:08:11): Sold the first company, and now you got the second 1 IP on congratulations, Mazzle. Saks has your processing unit overloaded with this question, or are you gonna be able to articulate something we're thankful for, and I appreciate David Sacks (01:08:23): I I I agree with with all the things that Friedberg said, you know, the flip side of working from home all this time is you do get spend a lot more time with the kids. I personally have I I like this shift to remote work where I can do a meeting from anywhere. You know, you don't have to go to the office. that's been kinda kinda nice upside, I think. I think we probably all learn how self sufficient we can be. I have learn how to give myself a haircut. Apparently, you guys don't think done a very good job with it. But Speaker 1 (01:08:54): -- Jason Calacanis (01:08:54): Well, it's better that David Sacks (01:08:55): you have your Jason Calacanis (01:08:55): long hair. Yeah. David Sacks (01:09:00): So yeah. But look. I mean, I'm thankful for, you know, knock on wood. We all have our health and You know? And, weirdly, the the economy of Silicon Valley is doing still doing great. Technology is doing great. Still the future. And I think the country is even though COVID is kind of at its worst right now, I do think it's gonna get rapidly better as soon as these vaccines come to market. So I do think we'll we'll we're I do think 2021 will be a much, much better year. Shamalff. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:33): In this really crazy way. I actually now am pretty thankful for what I've learned during the pandemic. I mean, I wish we didn't have to go through it. But I think that it was the most psychologically stressful period of my life. just to be so isolated from everybody. And I learned something about myself recently which is that in psychology, it's called repetitive comp compulsion, which is sort of like you know, you repeat the sins of your father or in this way, you know, I repeat these tired ways of behavior from my teens and my 20 that were just unproductive. And in the day to day life of just running around and going to meetings, as David said, like, flying around, go to a Go to the office. Go here. Go there. You can make a lot of excuses for shitty behaviors that you carry with you. And so what I'm really thankful for is in this lockdown, I've been forced to really find the things that that I don't really like about myself and try to fix them. So, you know, I'm I'm really thankful for that because I think hopefully, everybody has something positive to look at at the end of this, and that's definitely one thing for me. David Friedberg (01:10:53): That's Jason Calacanis (01:10:54): very touching and actually quite appropriate as we wrap here because Sachs and freebroke, and I had some things we don't like about you, Chamath, that we wanted to bring Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:02): up. So David Friedberg (01:11:04): you kinda crossed one off the list already, so I'm pulling up 4 more to go. David Sacks (01:11:09): It's it's good you're doing this work. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:11): It's good. We were David Friedberg (01:11:12): we were planning an intervention for this end of the pond, but you gotta open Jason Calacanis (01:11:17): the door. So here we go. You know, I'll wrap up with just saying, you know, family and friends are the obvious, you know, things that you appreciate at this time. I I Chamath thankful also for the hope that we've seen from, you know, what we can do collectively as a society when we put our minds to something warp speed comes to mind. These frontline workers I mean, we we really maybe have seen what a global, a challenging problem being solved can do. And hopefully, that can translate into something like nuclear disarmament, a sustainable energy, global warming, etcetera. And and so I think on a on a macro level, the most macro levels, the species us humans as a species have now had an enlightening moment just like World Wars and, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki kinda changed people's perspective the entire world. Jay and I were talking about that the other day of how the people looked at the world differently after those horrific bombs went off. I think after this bomb goes off, we're gonna look at the world and say, hey, we can solve problems, right? And maybe we can be proactive about that. And then finally, I think for the people suffering from mental illness, who maybe I was callous and made fun of or maybe just didn't relate to. I can relate to now because I have felt depressed. I have felt anxious. I have felt exhausted from this. Right? And it's the first time in the 49 years I've been on the planet that I ever would say I felt depressed. I didn't understand what that Meaning was when Saks would tell me how depressed he was, I just never never hit me. I'm joking. He never said that. But It's a good joke. I am joking. But I I you know, I think for people suffering from mental illness, get help and and, you know, talk to people. And and I think this really opened my my to that. And of course, this podcast, you know, and our friend -- This Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:02): podcast was the best thing that that in one of the best things in my life that came out of this whole period. Jason Calacanis (01:13:07): I think for me too. And, you know, I've heard that from a lot of the people who listened to it. And I'm sure if Sacks and Friedberg had a 4th emotion, they would would agree with -- Frankly, David Sacks (01:13:17): I think this podcast has been doing nothing but costing me money. You know? Jason Calacanis (01:13:23): Because I painted you out to Trump's supporters. David Sacks (01:13:25): No. I know how many years I've lost this. Yeah. Not not -- -- how many deals I've lost because Jason keeps trolling as a first supporter. And then on top of it, I get cut out of the only good bestie deal Jason Calacanis (01:13:37): If you would Speaker 1 (01:13:38): -- David Sacks (01:13:38): I thought at least I would get this best seat deal, and you guys cut me out of it. Jason Calacanis (01:13:43): Okay. Listen. I just wanna be clear. Saks is a conservative and a Republican he is not a Trump supporter. He vote for Trump. This time, he'd not vote for Trump last time. He does not support Trump's behavior. David Friedberg (01:13:55): You can't vote what he's voting, dude. Jason Calacanis (01:13:57): Sorry. But he told me he didn't vote for him. David Friedberg (01:14:00): Well, he Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:01): Which one which one of us which one of us is gonna try to hire Jared Kushner as a general partner? No. Definitely Jason Calacanis (01:14:09): not. if you are saying most likely because now you're reinforcing the theme that's Speaker 1 (01:14:12): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:12): Actually, if you had to pick actually, if you had to pick a venture fund that is most like the higher Jerry Christian as a GP. Jason Calacanis (01:14:18): Andreson Hornets. David Friedberg (01:14:19): Quadrant, anything for -- Are they still around? Founders's fun. Jason Calacanis (01:14:23): No. I don't think Peter wants to share the spotlight. Okay. I go in, Jason. They'll do anything to get a press release. David Friedberg (01:14:32): I don't think that guy needs a fun to go work at. Jason Calacanis (01:14:35): True. He helped us go buy another -- Yeah. David Sacks (01:14:37): He did get 3 Middle East peace deals done. So but, you know Speaker 1 (01:14:41): -- Jason Calacanis (01:14:41): Who's gonna even actually Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:44): By the by the way by the way, I mean, talk talking about inheriting incredible dividends, but is it the most incredible thing that you can come in and get Middle East piece done. But if you really unpack Middle East piece, do you think that Middle East piece would have happened if the cost of solar was not cheaper than the cost of oil. Honestly, be be be like, if if if you if you didn't see a end in sight to oil, do you think that the Middle East piece -- Yeah. I know what David Sacks (01:15:10): you're saying. David Friedberg (01:15:10): I don't think so. David Sacks (01:15:11): Well, I I know what you're saying, which is that if the Middle East wasn't becoming less strategically relevant to us, you know, that that creates degrees of freedom, I think. But yeah. David Friedberg (01:15:22): That's had profound benefits for Silicon Valley. too. Right? Like, I mean, all the Saudi money that went into the Vision Fund, and they the money from Qatar and the money from, like, all these sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East has funded a lot of venture funds has gone into direct late stage rounds in a lot of companies, and it's really been a great boom for Silicon Valley. People can make fun of the companies getting overfunded and the nonsense gone on all they wanted. Oh, like, Jason Calacanis (01:15:45): you're right. -- better that than coming home plate in Ferraris. David Friedberg (01:15:47): It filters out into more angel investing. It filters out into more venture LPs, and it ultimately gives a benefit to the ecosystem. So I I I think that the damage to oil has been great for Silicon Valley. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:57): The most incredible dividend of climate change is peace. It's like it's a it it it it is made radical Islam a failed startup, you know, a hyped series a that couldn't raise its series b. It's made, you know, sworn enemies over 1000 years cooperate together all for what reason because you gotta pull the oil out of the ground now and monetize it because otherwise, the cost of wind -- And you have to diversify because otherwise, the cost of wind cost of solar is gonna make pulling the oil out of the ground economically infeasible within 3 or 4 years. David Friedberg (01:16:32): Yeah. I mean, that's right. That's why they took Saudi Republic. They started selling off the shares, and they invested that capital in tech and other stuff around the world. And that's Speaker 1 (01:16:41): -- David Sacks (01:16:41): It's been helpful, but there is there is a another factor at work, which is the fear of Iran is now greater than on the part of Saudi Arabia and and Israel their fear of Iran is is now greater than whatever mutual hostility they used to have. And so it's it's kinda bringing people together that way. you gotta give Krishna credit for still getting those deals done. You know, no one thought he could get do it. I remember everyone was blocking him. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:07): I agree. There's not a he's David Friedberg (01:17:08): not he's not a moron, and he's not an he's on the he's the opposite of an abrasive guy, and he's very thoughtful and apparently very nervous you guys know personally, but he's supposed to be very smart. And I'm sure that wherever he ends up next, he's gonna do very well, and he's gonna get invited to be in a lot of places. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:25): Yeah. No. It's clear he did a very good job on the Middle East stuff. David Sacks (01:17:28): Yeah. By the way, how crazy is it that Trump delivers on hottest economy ever, peace in the Middle East, and 3 vaccines. for coronavirus and he's still lost. Who would've stopped that? David Friedberg (01:17:40): Well, it Jason Calacanis (01:17:40): does go to tell you what what people think of character Speaker 1 (01:17:43): -- Jason Calacanis (01:17:43): Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:17:44): -- David Friedberg (01:17:44): character mask. -- tweets, but Jason Calacanis (01:17:47): He tweeted something about this. If he acted normal sacks, he could actually take those victories. If he stopped the personal attacks, if he stopped the grifting, he would've won. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:55): He would've won 1. He could've been he actually it would've been more than 1. If he he came in if he he could exactly what I was thinking. If he came in in Speaker 1 (01:18:03): 2016, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:05): calm cool and collected with a team where there was dial down the insecurity and dial up sort of the intensity of actually calling people out for not passing progressive change. he would have been elected in a landslide. People would have said, well, on the way in, we were afraid. But after 4 years, the guy Jason Calacanis (01:18:22): actually -- -- magnanimous is what you're saying. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:24): Yeah. And it was a real missed opportunity for him. David Friedberg (01:18:27): I still think much of Trump is he's a WWE superstar, and that's what people voted for. It's why Jesseventura got elected governor of Minnesota. It's why Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor of California. The average you know, person that's looking at that guy versus, you know, the old dude that doesn't talk and, you know, saying some weird stuff about policy, it's, like, oh, man. That guy looks awesome. Let's put him in office. Like, this is gonna be fucking fun. And if he turn turn it down when he got in the office, he'd be much less appealing, I think, to a lot of people. I think -- Well, then -- It's that -- -- care. my caricature of himself that makes him so so appealing. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:00): Then I'd like to go I'd like to go on the record with my 15 year projection then or which is that the rock is gonna run for president. Jason Calacanis (01:19:10): I I think, you know, the Iran situation, just to put that in perspective, David, if you look at the age distribution on the chart I just put on the chat, it is just extraordinary how young that country is. The median age is, I think, twenty eight or twenty nine years old. And they're barely holding on to power there. And it is going to flip into a much more progressive society than it is now. they are barely holding on. When you look at how many twenty five year olds and thirty year olds there are in that country, who are drinking and watch TV David Friedberg (01:19:42): and have VPNs, then Jason Calacanis (01:19:44): they have the Internet, and they're watching porn, and they're gambling, I'm sure, and buying Bitcoin and doing all this crazy stuff. That country is barely holding on. it's gonna be a crazy civil war. And let's just hope they don't have nuclear bombs when that civil war happens. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:57): Guys, guys, like, being being like extremist. It's just like it's just a bad product market fit now. You know? It's just like not worth it. There's there's no money to fund it. Nobody cares that much anymore. Everybody's moved Jason Calacanis (01:20:10): Low NPS score. Yeah. Would you recommend extremism to a friend or Chamath member? Speaker 1 (01:20:19): 2. Jason Calacanis (01:20:20): Alright. This has been another all in podcast for Besty C, the rainman David Saxx, and the Queen of Kinwa on his coming out party today, IPO coming up for Metro Mile. Congratulations to Friedberg. Congratulations to Chamath on the pipe. Sachs and I. We're gonna have to figure out a way to lick our wounds and wet our beaks. Let's put our thinking caps on and over the break, find a deal we can exclude these 2 from. We gotta we gotta get in early, get to 30% of a company, and then we gotta have Chemouth, spack it in Friedberg, do the late stage deal with all this metro mile money. And we'll see you all next time on the all in podcast. That was fucking great. Best one yet. David Friedberg (01:21:01): You you guys wanna see something funny. You guys see that video my wife just sent me? That's my dog taking a shit on your driveway sex. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:07): Wait a minute. Oh, man. David Sacks (01:21:10): Oh, man. Jason Calacanis (01:21:11): Where is it? I wanna see that douche. David Friedberg (01:21:12): I just Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:13): put it David Friedberg (01:21:14): It's a code 13. I guarantee you. Oh my god. Jason Calacanis (01:21:17): There's only one person who hasn't code 13. Does that Shmuck, can you take a shit on his model Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:23): Oh my god. That's something we Speaker 1 (01:21:25): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:21:25): all have code Speaker 1 (01:21:25): 13. Jason Calacanis (01:21:29): Oh, no, everybody. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:31): Can we David Sacks (01:21:31): roll over the credits?